MS NOW told its viewers on Wednesday that FBI Director Kash Patel had "landed in Russia." He was in Lynchburg, Virginia, at Liberty University, honoring police officers. By the end of the day the network was reading a correction on air, and Patel was demanding three apologies.

What MS NOW said, and how fast it fell apart

Anchor Peter Alexander announced "breaking news" that Patel had landed in Russia for a meeting scheduled there, citing "two people familiar with the matter," according to Fox News Digital's account. Justice and intelligence reporter Ken Dilanian then added that FBI sources were worried because they did not know why Patel was going, and that the likely hosts would be Russia's FSB security service.

The FBI's Rapid Response account answered the same day. It posted side-by-side video of the MS NOW segment and Patel at Liberty University, and said the network's "sources" were "familiar" with "NOTHING!", as The National Desk reported. Members of Congress, including Rep. John McGuire of Virginia, shared photos from the same event, per The Epoch Times.

Kash Patel speaking at a 2023 event. Photo: Gage Skidmore, Wikimedia Commons, CC BY-SA 2.0.

The on-air correction

Later that day Dilanian told viewers that Patel "did not, in fact, land in Russia today and remains in the U.S." He said the FBI had not answered the network's questions, that the timing of any potential trip "remains unclear," and, in the words that matter most, "we regret this error." That is the whole retraction, and it followed the FBI publicly posting video of Patel in Virginia. MS NOW pointed Fox News Digital to Dilanian's on-air remarks and did not offer a further comment, per the Fox report.

The Epoch Times also reports that MS NOW removed a video in which a former FBI agent had called Patel a "babe in the woods" on Russia, and that the network did not say whether it would keep working with the same sources.

The part the network cannot wave away

This was not a slip about a vote count or a date. It was an on-air claim, attributed to unnamed people, that the head of the FBI had traveled to Russia, a charge with obvious political weight in a country that spent years on the Russia collusion story. Patel called it "a basic verification failure" and asked whether the public can trust the network's reporting on law enforcement, according to Fox.

The Society of Professional Journalists advises identifying sources when feasible and giving as much context as possible when anonymity is granted, as the Epoch Times noted. A two-source claim with no way for the viewer to weigh it, aired as breaking news about the man running the Bureau, is a hard fit for that standard.

The J. Edgar Hoover FBI Building, 935 Pennsylvania Avenue NW, Washington. Photo: Tony Webster, Wikimedia Commons, CC BY 2.0.

The trip that was in the news, and the trip that did not happen

In fairness to the full record, the story did not come from nowhere. In July, Politico reported that Patel planned to visit Moscow and St. Petersburg in mid-October, with the FSB expected to host, according to The Moscow Times' summary of the Politico report. The Kremlin neither confirmed nor denied it. Dilanian himself said Wednesday that the timing of any trip "remains unclear."

That context cuts against MS NOW, not for it. A planned trip is a reason to ask questions. It is not a reason to announce that a man has landed in a foreign country when he is at a law enforcement event in Virginia. The network had a rumor and turned it into a fact.

One more claim is circulating and should be treated as unconfirmed: critics have speculated the report was bait to flush out FBI leakers. An FBI official would neither confirm nor deny that, but said the two leakers involved would "likely" be identified and added, "We are always hunting leakers," per Fox. No evidence has been offered for a deliberate trap, and this site is not asserting one.

Why this keeps happening

MS NOW is fighting the White House in court over a ban that Trump imposed on it and several other outlets, which a federal judge has temporarily blocked while the government appeals, per the Epoch Times. Whatever one thinks of that fight, the network handed the administration its best talking point for free. When an outlet is asking the public to trust anonymous sourcing, it has to get the basics right, starting with where the subject of the story is standing.

Readers who want straight reporting on stories like this one, delivered without the anonymous-source spin, can find more from us and gear built for the audience that reads it at PatriotAddict.